Last week we talked about how a well-established campaign world can be spiced up with weird events, creatures, and powers – all under the umbrella of the “playable anomaly”.
The foundation for our playable anomalies will be another world, we’ll call it Murkengard, that is absolutely overflowing with dark oddities. In the distant past, this otherwise normal fantasy world was viciously struck by a celestial object which changed it all. Such a devastating event really should have obliterated all forms of life, but for Murkengard it only served to warp everything, not destroy it. The reality in which this world exists has become unstable and it finds itself spilling over into other realities, other game worlds, such as the one you may already be enjoying. This premise gives us a palette from which we can paint the adventuring canvas with the most bizarre and unpredictable vistas that our imagination will allow, and all without leaving the comfort of your favorite campaign setting.
On Murkengard, humans are not the most common or dominant species. In fact, it would be hard to identify any one creature as having that distinction. Oh, there may be a period occasionally when one species becomes more powerful than others, but that rarely lasts long because things change too frequently. Wars happen, allegiances change, things develop new abilities or the environment rewrites the rules for everyone. Many of the changes felt by the denizens are largely in response to the environment. Long ago, when Aod’s Eye descended and smote the world, so much debris was flung into the sky that it has blotted out the sun and stars ever since, irradiating everything. Significant portions of animal and plant life died, but the rest adapted. No one really knows for sure if any of it is true because there is no proof of the supposed sun or stars. There is only perpetual darkness and affliction.
We’ll be revealing more and more of this setting through playable anomalies (adventures) that range in size from single encounters to full story-rich escapades that can span a character level. In the near future, we will release our first full adventure and meanwhile preview it’s content here on the blog and in the newsletter. If you have any feedback as we go along, please feel free to speak up as it can only serve to improve the final product.
The next blog will propose how to set the stage in your game, introducing these new warped elements. We’ll also consider how players can prepare and what they can expect. If you’re a player, you’ll be interested to know that your character may get just as warped as the rest of the story. Imagine a fighter that suddenly has the ability to use telekinesis or pyrokinesis, without using feat slots, without multiclassing, without sacrificing existing powers. Or imagine a wizard that just gained the ability to increase his density whenever he likes, wading into a host of monsters and taking almost no damage and becomes a terrifying immovable, indestructible turret of arcane death. It would certainly be anomalous, which is why it’s fun.
